Beyond the Black Shield
by MisterMeowMeow
Summary: An experiment goes horribly, horribly right.


****Beyond the Black Shield****

The Department of Mysteries, the most enigmatic part of the British Ministry of Magic, was bustling with life.

Where before the only beings inside its shadowed halls were nondescript, grey-robed figures hurrying from one door to the next, sometimes carrying boxes, folders, mysterious devices and in one very memorable case a human brain (And that was a sight to behold – three grey robes with their faces obscured, all straining to levitate the disembodied organ through the corridors _while it was struggling_.), now, however, there was _life_ here. Researchers rushing from door to door, white coats billowing behind them and pens clutched to notepads, teams of short-robed construction wizards working in tandem to conjure and levitate stacks of metal, steel, wood and crystal all over the place, all slowly but surely gravitating to one particular place.

The Department had changed, over the years.

At the end of the second Blood War, a veritable storm had swept through the ministry – the people had refused to return to old customs, old traditions and opinions, and despite their best efforts, the Bombing of the Wizengamot in '99 was what actually hailed the end of political supremacy for the "old families". It was during the first breath of a speech by the then-Chief Warlock, who had been preparing to give a passionate speech about the value of pureblood tradition and had the most curious tattoo on his left forearm, that the device activated. A single knut transfigured itself back into its original form, returning to being a tiny box with two compartments – One filled with hydrogen, the other with an almost identical substance that had been cleverly alchemised to switch its elemental charge. The transfigured knut had "accidentally" landed underneath the Chief Warlock's podium at some point in the night, and the resulting explosion could be felt across the entirety of London.

It was extremely lucky that the chamber sported some of the most aggressive defensive enchantments ever developed (bit of an oxymoron, that), which absorbed something of 90 to 98% of the excess radiation, turning only the inside of the chamber into a form of matter not seen outside the core of a neutron star for nary an instant, before shattering with a mighty gong-like sound and dispersing an unbearable heat (and elemental plasma) through the surrounding stonework.

Needless to say that there were no survivors.

Due to the sudden and quite brutal death of most of the more... "conservative" members of the political body of Magical Britain, this event could not be used to rally support against muggles, their ghastly cultures and... _freedoms_, so something quite miraculous happened instead.

Wizards actually learned from their mistakes.

Within two months, the few muggle-born and muggle-friendly members of the ministry, in tandem with their sympathizers, managed to form a provisional elected body – though this body was never disbanded and the "provisional" part was quietly dropped a year later.

It would take two more decades before the wounds of centuries past could finally, carefully, begin to heal – a muggle government here, a lessening of the Statute there. More and more non-magicals could be informed about the existence of magic, up and until the point of the dreaded and anticipated Global Revelation.

It is a few decades after this event that our story is set. In the aformentioned Department of Mysteries, which was really the Department of Magical Sciences now, a project was about to be completed.

* * *

"Five minutes to final ignition" said a pleasant, though obviously artificial voice through the departmental intercom, stirring the collected muggle scientists, Unspeakables and magical engineers in the deepest chamber of the DoMS like an angry beehive. There were shouts and yells, clangs and sparks, and for a brief few seconds, there was the testing wail of a terror-siren.

The chamber resembled a large cylinder lying on its side, with the entire far end occupied by a single, massive construct, and the other by an elevated platform neatly bisecting the cylinder to grant space to stand on. To ignorant eyes, it would look like a portal to hell itself – a set of seven rings, slowly spinning themselves in a sperical formation, the entire device slowly turning on its own axis. At its center, if they were to be blessed with superior eyesight, one could just barely make out a pinprick of light shining outwards, everything bending ever so slightly around it.

Due to the large gravitational and magical suppressors currently encircling the anomaly, none of the bustling scientists and Unspeakables could feel the immense influence of the point – a point which, at this point, had the equivalent gravity of the entire planet it was sitting upon, a number that was quickly growing.

"Two minutes until final ignition"

The lights began to dim, and most of the bustling stopped as a large portion of the occupying personell filed into the cargo-lift at the other end of the cylindrical chamber, with the rest staring at the construct they had so painstakingly developed. Some had awe, terror and delight written into their faces at the same time, watching the now very visible point of disturbance grow ever more prominent.

With a mechanical **CLACK**, the rotating rings began increasing in speed, with the inner few leaving an eerie purple afterimage, which was even more visible as the lights dimmed considerably.

"60 Seconds until final ignition" sounded the artifical voice once more, but it was quickly replaced by the much more human voice of the lead Unspeakable in charge of the operation. Her voice had only the slightest waver to it, though her face was one of the few without any terror visible in it. "Approaching one solar mass, schwarzschild margin decreasing by two percent every ten seconds."

As the disturbance grew, its influence was felt around the chamber – though not physically, of course. It was as though the now quite sizable anomaly had begun emanating its own light – yet, the device's portion of the chamber was visibly darker than the rest, and an emotion no one would have expected made itself felt.

Nobody paid attention to the thirty second mark – being too occupied with the ice spreading along the walls and the almost crushing terror which had begun to emanate from the construct they had created. One of the Unspeakables lost his nerve and dove toward the emergency shutoff, but before he could reach it, a red flash hit him square in the back and he crumpled to the floor.

In a moment of brilliance, the one who had shot the stunning spell acted on a whim and conjured their Patronus, the glowing lion-figure growling at the growing anomaly with unusual agression for a being charmed into existence, before taking up stance just before the extendible but currently retracted bridge and lifting the spirits of those bathed in its light.

"Full ignition commenced."

The voice was as emotionless as ever, and the large rings began glowing with an inner light, their rotation speeding up with a white, glowing after-image encircling the by now massive and wavering anomaly.

"We've reached the critical moment!" The lead Unspeakable shouted through the growing noise of groaning metal and rushing wind.

Time seemed to stand still as the anomaly wavered, then began to collapse inwards.

There was a last, mighty groan in the chamber's superstructure as the energy-dense point struggled in vain against the crushing might of gravity, a fight which it slowly but surely lost as more and more energy pumped into it from the outside, compacting it into a smaller and smaller volume of space.

With one final waver, the almost blinding glow vanished into nothing, before a physical wave of ice-cold, utter _FEAR_ slammed through the chamber, freezing boots to floors and fingers to quills and wands, completely disrupting the already struggling Patronus into fading silver mist. The object at the other end of the chamber had an aura unlike anything the collective wizards, witches and scientists had ever felt, and in the face of such utter _wrongness_, nobody dared move a muscle.

Two brave souls still clutching their wands stared at the abomination they had helped create with wider eyes than the others, before clasping hands and lifting their wands at the same time, conjuring identical Patroni. The twin butterflies circled eachother and took position as close to the darkened portion of the room as they could - without evaporating from its sheer presence. There was a steady beat of undiluted Fear upon their souls from the object, but with the addition of the twin spirits more and more shook the ice from their robes and labcoats and conjured their own, the two quickly joined by a small army of guardian spirits – their spectral eyes transfixed upon the darkened device with an eerie stillness uncharacteristic of the normally lively beings.

The lead Unspeakable broke through her own stunned fear and stumbled to her control station, pulling a large lever with some effort, which turned on the lights and banished much of the unsettling darkness still persisting through the warm glow of the Patroni. The light unveiled the fruit of their labor.

A large, unmoving sphere of perfect and undisturbed Darkness was floating inside the madly spinning structure, about thirteen meters across and seemingly sucking in all the surrounding light, causing a headache simply by being looked at. The back wall appeared to push itself outward, forming the illusion of a shell made of distorted light just inside the rotating ring system, and making everyone not frozen in the residual fear penetrating the barrier of Patronus-spirits avert their eyes.

"We did it," came the slightly unsteady voice of the grey-robed woman. It was barely a whisper, yet still audible in the entire room. "We fucking did it."

* * *

The newly formed Black Hole was aptly named "The Eye of Terror" due to its immense aura of almost primordial fear, which could only partly be blocked by the constant influence of multiple Patroni. It was quickly beginning to be studied, both muggle and magical scientists salivating at the thought of experimenting on a contained singularity without lightyear-long trips throughout the galaxy.

There was an issue, though.

A Black Hole, once created, cannot be destroyed. Anything thrown at it disappears forever, and the hypothetical method of evaporation was just that – hypothetical. And slow.

The object itself was a paradox in almost all aspects. Sporting measurable infinities on multiple scales, being both highly magical and the most nonmagical object ever measured, it boggled the minds of the greatest scientists involved in its creation.

Over the following months, a bigger problem made itself known, however. The suppressors designed to keep it from tearing apart the planet were weakening, their enchantments distrupted by the immense aura and their material basis eroding from the immense gravity and radiating frost. It got to the point where the entire back-end of the chamber was covered in sheets of ice and frost, the stabilizers continuing to struggle against the thing's aura attempting to sap all forms of energy.

Committees were formed, research was rushed and theories were examined for a method of evaporating, destroying or dispersing the Eye, but nothing worked. The attempt at making it a Portkey to the far reaches of the Alpha Centauri system failed spectacularily, the conclave of seven charms masters bursting into iridescent flames and being almost instantly consumed by them as the creation process for an interstellar portkey affecting an object of nigh-infinite mass attempted to force their bodies to channel an infinite amount of magical energy.

Eventually, another set of suppressors was built, this one just outside the last, this time consisting of thirteen rings for arithmantical stability, completed and spun up just as the first set crumbled into the Eye, never to be seen again.

The brief moment between the first set being destroyed and the second set springing into action was felt across the solar system, earthquakes and magical disturbances wracking the Earth and Moon for weeks afterward, and convincing the last people still campaigning for keeping the Eye active of its existential danger.

At some point, the most eerie thing happened – shortly after the Eye's influence was felt across the world, all Dementors remaining on the planet seemed to gravitate toward Britain, specifically the Ministry.

The army of despair was held back valiantly for days, clawing and crowding at the few unsealed entrances, until the Aurors' Patronus-chain broke in multiple places and the black-cloaked beings of darkness flooded into the deserted halls of the Ministry, streaming downwards through elevator shafts and air vents, all without attacking a single soul along the way.

They eventually reached the Eye of Terror and began flooding through the chamber directly into it. The combined aura of several thousand Dementors, stacked alongside the massive influence from the Eye sent several attending personnel to St. Mungo's, joining the ex-professor Lockhart and the Longbottoms in the permanent spell damage ward.

Through all of this, possible solutions were explored, tested and rejected, causing multiple deaths and increasingly gruesome failures, and a hare-brained plan was proposed in the wake of the second set of rings beginning to weaken.

* * *

"The theory of Relativity," one of the muggle scientists on the so-called 'Solution Board' had said, "postulates that on the inside of a Black Hole, the dimensions of space and time switch places – 'toward the singularity' becomes your future, and 'backwards in time' becomes the way out."

Several wizarding members of the board perked up, and the present Unspeakables exchanged worried glances. When time travel was mentioned, things were becoming desperate.

"I hope you aren't proposing we prevent it's creation." said the female Unspeakable who had overseen the initial process. "Because things happen to people that try to mess with time. Horrible things."

"No, I've read your files, the results of your time-turning experiments." the man shuddered slightly. "Preventing its creation would be optimal, but it's not possible. What I am proposing is this..."

* * *

The idea was unorthodox and crazy, too crazy to work and yet so logical. It was debated and calculated, examined and re-examined by the greatest minds on Earth, wizarding and otherwise.

It relied on two steps, the first being the creation of a specialized kind of Portkey, one not tethered to the condition of physical touch, but perception. It would never work like a normal Portkey, because its condition for transport wasn't 'touching the object' but 'being inside the object'. Useless for normal applications, as even an implanted Portkey would not technically be 'inside' the person, but usable if the creator considered the entire Eye of Terror as a single 'thing' while enchanting the Portkey – once inside the Event Horizon, its magic would constitute as 'inside the object', and should drag it along once activated.

The transport itself would also be altered – an interstellar Portkey was deemed impossible to enchant for an object the Eye's mass, and as such, the charm was refactored to remove the destination. It would vanish in one location... and not appear in another. The philosophical debates about similarities to the Vanishing charm would have to wait for another day.

Enchanting it took three months time, a team of wizards working round the clock on the small cube of goblin silver, pouring energy into the innocuous item until it was hot to the touch. When it was finished, the cube had transformed into pure, blue crystal with a light shining from within, vibrating, hovering slightly and sweltering from the sheer energy concentrated in its enchantment.

The hard part had yet to come, though. A portkey needed a wizard's touch to work, either by wand, skin or word – and it had to be situated inside the Event Horizon of the Eye.

Not willing to conduct a flat-out suicide mission, the plan's second step was much more ambitious.

If the only way out of a Black Hole was backwards through time, then the activating wizard would need a way to go backwards through time.

And although all the DoM's Time Turners had been destroyed during the second Blood War, their original schematics had not – and building one was a simple matter for the combined minds of the DoMS. The addition of more minds than had been involved in their original creation allowed the Unspeakables to solve one of the major flaws of the original design – the appearance of the traveler at their original spot of departure. It was unclear as to if this would even matter due to the 'dimension-switching' aspect of black holes, but the capability was added regardless.

* * *

In the end, finding a volunteer was not an issue, because one person from the Board itself stepped forward.

Donning the silver chain of the heavy Time-Turner resting against her Robes, the Unspeakable who had originally overseen the Eye's creation grasped the vibrating portkey-cube in dragonhide gloves.

As the bridge extended toward the Eye of Terror, an army of Patroni staring down the dark sphere, she found herself anxious, filled with a hefty amount of terror... and also anticipation. She had been a Gryffindor after all.

"Do you remember the activation phrase for both the 'key and the Time Turner?" Asked the Muggle scientist standing across from her while he looked over the experimental runic gravity-negating enchantment on her robes one last time.

"I do. Just... steeling my nerves." she rolled her shoulders backwards.

"Take all the time you need. The magic's looking good" He said, flipping up his mage-sight lens as she walked out onto the bridge, one of the Patroni following her. It wavered and eventually disappeared a few paces before she reached the swiftly rotating, but ice-covered stabilizers.

"Slowing the rings now." came the far-away voice of the console operator, and the large rings began rotating slower. With each second, the Eye's influence grew stronger, more pronounced and deadly – the cold seeped through her boots and the gravity-negating enchantment on her robes flared to life as a blazing runic pattern on the garment. It may, in theory, allow for free movement once inside the Event Horizon – never tested, but highly probable.

She keenly felt the otherworldy terror of the Black Hole trying to grab hold of her, but focusing on the immensely magical object in her hands, coupled with the modest amount of Occlumency she had managed to learn over the years helped stave off its effects, while the enchantment on her robes prevented being frozen alive or sucked in prematurely.

The Time Turner was set, the Portkey burned hot through the dragon leather.

"Good luck!"

She heard the distorted sound of an explosion behind her just as she stepped forward into the inky blackness.

* * *

The inside of a Black Hole is indescribable. Entering it felt unlike anything she had expected, there was no resistance to the event horizon - nothing physical, in any case. The enchantment on her robes blazed with stored energy, bathing her in an eerie orange glow as she passed the Event Horizon, the magic trying to support an utter impossibility and quickly burning out because of it.

Before long, she had entered it completely, and found her movement restricted. It was literally impossible to move anything backwards.

Eyes still fixed on the glowing Portkey before her, she released it, and watched it slowly drift away toward the singularity. Before it could exit her tiny bubble of stability and become spaghettified, she managed to bark out "Activate!", the trigger phrase for both the Portkey and the Time Turner, and wrenched her eyes shut as a blazing light was released from the cube floating deeper into the Heart of Terror itself.

For barely an instant, she felt like her entire front side had been exposed to the might of the sun as a terrible burning made itself known, then there was a great rushing and the Time Turner began to work its magic. Burning eyes still wrenched shut, she did not see the journey – but she felt it. The Black Hole had a hold on her, and it would not, could not, let go. It exerted an immense pressure, struggling for every milimetre of physically impossible motion. She felt like she was being torn in half, a terrible pain spiking through her very being as the Time Turner slowly but surely tore her backwards through time, space and the muddied things inbetween, the assumption true and the dimension's roles having switched places.

And then it was over.

She was dimly aware of solid ground beneath her feet as well as a horrible burning across her entire body, then an explosion of metal, glass and magic against her chest threw her backwards, only to be caught mid-air by a levitation spell grasping her smoldering robes and stopping the involuntary motion.

Opening her eyes while floating, she could see a brilliant white light engulfing the Eye of Terror, flowing between the support beams and suppressor rings, before it snapped inwards, robbing the room of all light and magic and then exploded, tearing apart the support structure and activating an emergency enchantment on the observational platform. A shield was raised, dimmed and held against the blinding radiance and debris. Then darkness fell once more, the silence punctuating itself through the occasional spark and rumble of the surrounding machinery, and the earth itself.

Everyone in the room, wizard and muggle alike, could feel an incredible ebb and flow as the ambient magic attempted to stabilize and close the massive hole that had just been torn into the fabric of the universe.

Eventually, it calmed, and everyone picked themselves up from (or floated towards) the ground, staring at the warped metal of the broken containment unit which had, up to this point, held an object that could, and would have destroyed all of humankind.


End file.
